The Twelve (Book Two of The Passage Trilogy): A Novel (40 page)

Though Satch was presumed killed in the explosion, Henneman had led a squad back up the mountain to look for him. The gesture was symbolic; still, it had to be made. In any case, they’d found nothing. What had happened at the base of the cave would never be known.

“So that’s that, I guess.”

“Satch was a good guy. Everybody liked him.”

“We always say that.”

Alicia shrugged. “Doesn’t make it any less true.”

Peter knew they were thinking the same thing: the plan had been theirs, and now Satch was dead.

“Seeing as you’re fed, I should be heading off. Apgar’s sending me south to recon some of those oil fields.”

“Lish, how did you know something was down there?”

The question seemed to catch her short. “I don’t really have an answer, Peter. It was just … a feeling.”

“A feeling.”

She was staring past him. “I don’t really know how to put it into words.”

“I thought only Amy could do that.”

Alicia shrugged, pushing the subject aside:
Don’t press
. “I guess I owe you for going out on a limb for me like that. Nice to have a little company in the doghouse at least.”

“This whole thing has had it, hasn’t it?” he said glumly.

“Apgar’s going to do what he’s going to do. I’m not a mind reader.”

“Do you think he believes us?”

Alicia said nothing. Her eyes had gone away again. Then, with a quizzical expression:

“Peter, do you remember that movie
Dracula
?”

The memory called him back five years. Peter had been watching it with Vorhees’s men in the Colorado garrison on the night Alicia had returned from the mission that had found the nest of virals in an old copper mine.

“I didn’t know you saw it.”

“Saw it? Hell, I
studied
it. The thing is like a viral owner’s manual. Never mind the cape and castle and all that nonsense. It’s the rest that fits. A human being whose life has been ‘unnaturally prolonged.’ Using the stake in the heart to kill him. The way he has to sleep in his native soil. The whole business with the mirrors—”

“Like the pan in Las Vegas,” Peter cut in. “I thought the same thing.”

“It’s as if their reflection, I don’t know, screws them up somehow. The whole movie is like that.”

“Lish, where are you going with this?”

She hesitated. “Something always nagged at me, a piece I couldn’t place. Dracula has a sort of adjutant. Somebody who still looks human.”

Peter remembered. “The crazy one who eats the spiders.”

“That’s the guy. Renfield. Dracula infects him, but he doesn’t flip, at least not completely. He’s more like somebody caught in the early stages of infection. It got me wondering, what if they all have somebody like that?” She was looking at him keenly now. “Do you remember what Olson said about Jude?”

Olson was the leader of the community they’d found in Nevada, the Haven—a whole town of people who would sacrifice their own to Babcock, First of Twelve. Olson had been nominally in charge, but the fact had emerged that it was Jude who really ran the place. He had some kind of special relationship to Babcock, though its nature had gone unexplained.

“ ‘He was … familiar,’ ” Peter quoted. “I never understood what Olson meant. It didn’t really make sense. And you
were
pointing a gun at his head.”

“So I was. And believe me, there are days when I wish I’d gone ahead and pulled the trigger. But I don’t think it was gibberish. I looked up the word at the library back in Kerrville. The dictionary said the definition was archaic, so I had to look that up too, which basically just means old. It said that a familiar is a kind of helper demon, like a witch’s cat. A sort of assistant. Maybe that’s what Olson was talking about.”

Peter allowed himself several seconds to process this. “So what you’re saying is that Ignacio was Martínez’s … familiar.”

Alicia shrugged. “Okay, it’s a stretch. I’m sort of cobbling things together here. But the other thing to consider is the signal. Ignacio had a chip in him, just like Amy and the Twelve. That means he’s connected to Project N
OAH.
”

“Did you tell Apgar any of this?”

“Are you serious? I’m in enough trouble as it is.”

Peter didn’t doubt that. Nor did he doubt that whatever blame she had incurred for the botched raid on the cave was his as well.

Alicia rose to go. “Either way, we should know more about where we stand by the time I get back from Odessa. No point in worrying for now. I know you think you’re indispensible, but we can get along without you for a few days.”

“You’re not making me feel any better.”

She smiled. “Just don’t expect me to come back to feed you again, Lieutenant. You only get that once.”

As she moved toward the door, Peter said, “Lish, hold up a second.”

She spun to look at him.

“What Ignacio said. ‘He left us.’ What do you think it means?”

“I don’t have an answer for that. All I know is he should have been there.”

“Where do you think he went?”

She didn’t answer right away. A shadow moved over her face, a darkening from within. It wasn’t anything Peter had seen before. Even in the most perilous circumstances, her composure was total. She was a woman of absolute focus, always giving her attention to the task at hand. This was similar, but the energy wasn’t the same. It seemed to come from a deeper place.

“I wish I knew,” she said, and slipped her glasses on. “Believe me.”

Then she was gone, the flaps of the tent shifting with her departure. Peter felt her absence immediately, as he always did. It was true: they were always leaving each other.

Peter did not see her again. Six days later, he was released. His ribs would need longer to heal, and he would have to take it easy for a couple of weeks, but at least he was out of bed. Making his way across the garrison to report for duty, a surge lifted his steps. The sensation reminded him of a time many years ago when, just a boy, he’d been sick with a high fever, and after the fever had broken how just being up and about made even ordinary things seem charged with a fresh vitality.

Yet something else was different; Peter could feel it. Everything appeared normal—the soldiers on the catwalks, the roar of generators, the ordered movements of military activity all around—yet he sensed a shift, a discernible lessening of intensity.

He entered the command tent to find Apgar standing behind his desk of battered metal, scowling at a stack of papers.

“Jaxon. I didn’t expect to see you for a couple more days. How are you feeling?”

The question struck Peter as uncharacteristically personal. “Fine, sir. Thank you for asking.”

“Take a seat, won’t you?”

For a while Apgar continued to shift his papers. Though not a large man—Peter stood at least two hands taller—the colonel exuded a strong, physical presence, his movements precise, nothing wasted. After a period
of time that might have been two full minutes, he appeared to achieve a satisfactory ordering to the documents and lowered himself into his chair to face Peter across the desk.

“I have new orders for you. They came this morning in the pouch from Kerrville. Before you say anything, I want you to know this has nothing to do with what happened in Carlsbad. I’ve been expecting this for some time, actually.”

The last of Peter’s hopes sank beneath the waves. Going, going, gone. “We’re abandoning the hunt, aren’t we?”

“ ‘Abandoning’ would be too strong a word. Putting under review. There’s a feeling at Command that some of our resources have to shift. For the time being, you’re being transferred to the Oil Road.”

It was worse than Peter had expected. “That’s a job for Domestic Security.”

“Generally, yes. But this isn’t without precedent, and it comes from the president’s office. Apparently she’s of the opinion that security for oil shipments has been too lax, and she wants the Army to take a role. A transport leaves at the end of the week for Kerrville, and I want you on it. From there you’ll report to the DS in Freeport.”

Despite what Apgar said, Peter knew the decision had everything to do with Carlsbad. He was being demoted—if not in rank, then in responsibility.

“You can’t do that, sir.”

A lift of his eyebrows, no more. “Perhaps I misheard you, Lieutenant. I could swear you just told me what I could and could not do.”

Peter felt his face grow warm. “Sorry, Colonel. That’s not what I meant.”

Apgar studied Peter a moment. “Look, I get it, Jaxon. Tell me something. How long have you been out here?”

Of course the colonel knew the answer; he was asking only to make a point. “Sixteen months.”

“A long time in the sticks. You should have been rotated out a while ago. The only reason you haven’t is that you always put in a request to stay. I’ve let it go because I know what the hunt means to you. In a way, you’re the reason all of us are here.”

“There’s no place else I want to be, sir.”

“And you’ve made that abundantly clear. But you’re only human, Lieutenant. Frankly, you need the break. I’m headed back to Kerrville after we button things up, and as soon as I can, I’ll put in a request at Division to move you back out to the territories. I’m not in the habit of making deals, so I suggest you take this one.”

There was nothing to do but agree. “If I may ask, Colonel, what about Lieutenant Donadio?”

“She’s got new orders, too. This isn’t just you. As soon as she returns from the slicks, she’s going north to Kearney.”

Fort Kearney was the northernmost outpost of the Expeditionary. With a supply line stretching all the way from Amarillo, it was typically shut down before the first snowfall.

“Why there? Winter’s only a couple of months away.”

“Command doesn’t tell me everything, but from what I hear it’s gotten pretty thick up there. Given her talents, I’m guessing they want a new S2 to help clear out the hostiles before they evac.”

The explanation felt thin, but Peter knew better than to press.

“I’m sorry about Satch,” Apgar continued. “He was a good officer. I know you were friends.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“Dismissed, Lieutenant.”

Peter spent the rest of the week in a state of suspension. With nothing else to occupy his time, he mostly stayed in his quarters. The map on the inside lid of the locker, once a badge of purpose, now felt like a bad joke. Maybe there was something to Alicia’s theory, and maybe there wasn’t. It seemed likely they would never find out. He thought of the time before he’d joined the Expeditionary, wondering if he’d made a mistake by enlisting. Back then, the fight had been his alone. Now it belonged to a larger enterprise, one with rules and protocols and chains of command in which he had little, if any, say. He had surrendered his freedom to become just another junior officer about whom people would someday remark, “He was a good guy.”

The morning of his departure arrived. Peter carted his locker to the staging area where the transport awaited, a semitrailer loaded with the tires Peter’s men had brought down from Lubbock. He hoisted his baggage into the cargo compartment of the escort vehicle and climbed into the passenger seat.

“Good to be going home, sir?”

Peter merely nodded. Anything he might have said would have sounded peevish, and the driver, a corporal from Satch’s squad, didn’t deserve to bear the brunt of his bad mood.

“I’ll tell you the first thing I do after I collect my scrip,” the corporal said, his exuberance barely contained. “I’m going straight to H-town to
spend half of it on lick and the other half in a whorehouse.” Suddenly embarrassed, he glanced at Peter with a flustered look. “Um, sorry, sir.”

“That’s all right, Corporal.”

“Anybody at home for you, Lieutenant? If you don’t mind my asking.”

The answer was too complicated to even begin. “In a way.”

The corporal gave a knowing smile. “Well, whoever she is, I’m sure she’ll be happy to see you.”

The order was given; with a belch of diesel fumes, the convoy began to pull away. Peter was already settling into the trancelike state he hoped to maintain for the next three days when he heard someone yelling over the racket of engines.

“Hold at the gate!”

Alicia was jogging toward the Humvee. Peter drew down the window.

“I just got back an hour ago,” she said. “Who do you think you are, leaving without saying goodbye?”

Her face was a mask of oily grime; she smelled faintly of petroleum. But the thing that caught his eye was a glint of metal on her collar: a pair of captain’s bars.

“Well, look at that,” he said, managing a wry grin that he hoped masked his envy. “I guess I’ll have to start calling you ‘sir.’ ”

“I like the ring of that. About time, if you ask me.”

“Apgar’s cycling me out.”

“I know. The Oil Road.” There was no reason to elaborate. “It’s easy duty, Peter. You’ve earned it.”

“That’s what they tell me.”

“Say hi to the Circuit for me. And Greer, if you see him.”

Peter nodded. There was only so much that could be said with the driver present. “When do you leave for Kearney?”

“Two days.”

“All eyes up there. Apgar says it’s gotten pretty thick.”

“You, too.” She glanced at the driver, who was studying the wheel with his eyes, then back at Peter. “Don’t worry. What we were talking about before. It’s not over, okay?”

He felt, inside her words, the pressure of something unstated. From behind them rose an impatient roar of engines. Everyone was waiting.

“Sir, we really have to be going,” the driver said.

“That’s okay, we’re done here.” Alicia regarded Peter one last time. “I mean it, Peter. It’ll be all right. Just go see your boy.”

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